The California college-grant operation has gone almost unnoticed. It is supremely interesting and may prove a model for orderly welfarism. The arrangement, scheduled to start next year, calls for granting a state subvention of $9,700 to all low-income and many middle-income graduates of California high schools who scored B or better at school and go on to a private college in the state. (A lesser sum is available for similarly qualified students who want to attend a public university in the state.) Here are some questions.
If we assume that 40 percent of the high schoolers got B's or better in 1990-2000, what will be the likely grade average in 2000-2010? Optimists will put it this way: The added inducement of $38,800 toward tuition (four years at $9,700) will spur intellectual applications among children, and that is hardly to be discouraged or criticized.
The difficulty here, of course, is that the giving out of grades is in part a subjective exercise. It is the evaluation of a student's work by a teacher. When grading time comes, that teacher is going to ask himself (herself), Am I dooming this kid's future by failing to give him a B? Will I then be responsible for whatever failures in his (OK, her) life derive from having less than a college education, since he could never afford one if he needed to pay his own way?
This invites reflection on the whole meritocratic idea. Is there a judge out there (in California, the answer is that there is a judge out there who will say anything) who will come along and say that to give state money to Alice and deny it to Joan merely because Alice scored better at school is to exercise discrimination? It may be all right for the teacher to decide on the relative accomplishments of Alice and Joan, but it is not OK for her ruling in the matter to involve public money.
This line of argument may seem preposterous, but what is preposterous can become law. A couple of judges have told Texas students they can't pray at a school event.
If California moves in the direction of giving every student a B, or if it moves in the direction of enlarging (further) the subsidy to include C and D students, then what we have got is free college education for everybody. And it is time to ask, What is so bad about that? What is bad about it is that we have another entitlement, and a firm commandment in public policy ought to be: No more entitlements.